Happy Fourth of July!

To those of you who celebrate, I hope you’re enjoying the holiday with friends and family - and that you take time today to dip into a red, white, and blue stack of your own! I’ll be spending the day with my family. We’re looking forward to a parade, a cookout, and fireworks at dusk. Of course, we also spend the day acknowledging the freedoms we so often take for granted.

While I’ll be taking time today to be with my favorite people, I thought I’d leave you with four things to hopefully lift your spirits. I promise that you don’t have to be American to enjoy them - though I think Americans will find them especially poignant today.

• Seventeen people tell NPR, in their own words, what freedom means to them

• Peggy Noonan’s beautiful essay on America

• A deep dive into fireworks

• The hilarious, epic fail of eagle cake

That’s all I have for you at the moment, though I’ll have a fresh post ready for you next week. In the meantime, I wish you well. May you light up the sky in your own way, wherever you are.

“We shall go wild with fireworks … and they will plunge into the sky and shatter the darkness.”

-Natsuki Takaya